Supreme Court of Canada ruling threatens free speech. U.S. court puts a stop to it and says Canada's top court overstepped its bounds and infringed on the right to free speech.

Huffington Post

Proposed new law: Scratch below the surface and it’s immediately clear this is hardly about religious discrimination in general. Islamophobia has morphed into a catch-all phrase to silence anyone critical of the religion. This applied even if they were denouncing extremism like Shariah law or groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.

Winnipeg Sun

The Supreme Court has advised Ontario not to try to tell us we aren’t allowed to make our own protest signs without filing a form with the elections office, though apparently it thinks it could if it wanted to..

Ottawa

This is a truly sad development. Free speech is under fire on Canadian campuses. And to those who say this only applies to people who are really doing something very controversial or shocking the fact is that no matter how benign your topic -- government debt, for example -- there's almost always going to be someone who doesn't agree. If we allow them to silence the Jordan Petersons of the world, soon they will try to silence you. As professor Peterson said, "I've been denounced, and you're next."

HuffPost Canada Media

Judge Brent Knazan was reading aloud his decision in the infamous Twitter trial on Friday, virtually all the players in the case were a little unhinged. It’s a rather lovely judgment, in my view, first of all, because Knazan came to the right decision — Twitter really is, to borrow a line from an old Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ song, “the great wide open” — but also because of how respectfully the judge did it.

National Post

Of all the cultural themes that have inspired lengthy thinkpieces this year, perhaps none have spilled more ink—or generated more criticism—than political correctness. What, exactly, does “political correctness” mean?

Forbes

Nova Scotia 'Cyberbullying Law ' violates Charter Rights. Justice Glen McDougall of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia also declined a Crown request to suspend his declaration that the law is invalid for 12 months to allow the legislature time to amend it.

The Canadian Press

Leave it to The Onion to get at the truth of campus extremism in one deft paragraph: "We want to create an atmosphere where both students and faculty feel comfortable voicing a single homogeneous opinion,” said University president Kevin Abrams,

The Onion

Court decision is among the first to establish the legal boundaries in Canada’s blogosphere, The ruling concludes the political blogosphere must be governed by existing laws, but it also recognizes the Internet is a place of strongly worded opinion and hyperbole, where fair comment should be given a broad interpretation. Justice Heidi Polowin decided against awarding costs to either side in the bitterly fought case.

Ottawa

Qualified privilege is a defence against libel, meaning a statement was made in good faith according to a social, moral or legal duty, such as reporting an offence to police. It fails if the statement was made maliciously. Absolute privilege, on the other hand, which applies for example to statements made in Parliament, protects everything, even malicious statements.

National Post

How did this ever make it to trial? -two lawyers who are now themselves represented by other lawyers. At the end of the day, and I mean it literally and not in the way lawyers say it, I felt like a real and proper Canadian, in that I wanted to plead " can’t we all just get along? "

Post Media

If said conduct, whether that be physically following someone or repeatedly communicating with that person, causes the person "reasonably, in all the circumstances, to fear for their safety," that's enough, says the Criminal Code. Complainant and defendant both intense, prolific tweeters

Post Media

Setting aside the merits of the argument for a moment, what happened to Tom Flanagan last week was more than a little Orwellian. The episode’s first Orwellian aspect is that Flanagan was surreptitiously videoed and the video posted on YouTube

It is as important what the Court did not say. It did not choose to begin a ruling on an important freedom of speech case with a ringing affirmation of the importance of free speech, or what an extraordinary thing it is to place restrictions upon it.

Stand-up comedian used some unpopular words to describe the heckler. She instigated a case against him at the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal

Globe and Mail

Remember Voltaire? He’s the 18th-century French philosopher whose views on free speech were summed up as, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” No doubt he was in the minds of several lawyers appearing this week in a Calgary courtroom

It used to be that only established media and publishing organizations had to worry about libel, but now anyone with web access and a quick temper can find themselves facing a lawsuit.

Ottawa Citizen

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